The Cult of Tara

68 MAGIC AND RITUAL IN TIBET
only to those able to invest the time required for the contemplative
training that alone makes one fit to use them. Thus the monastery
acts as a service group— a pool of ritual talent—for the lay community,
and suitable recompense in the form of food, tea, and
money is given to the monks for any special call upon their professional
services. The relationship is reciprocal, however; the lay
community demands a proportionate return on its investment in
the monastery's support, and lay people are often quite concerned
that the monks maintain the moral character necessary for the
success of the ritual.
Within the life of the monastic community both ritual approaches
play an important role: all the rituals of the afternoon assembly
(that is, the prayers to the various protectors) are rituals of offering;
all the rituals for the high patron deities in the morning assembly
(including the short "hidden treasure" ritual for Tara) are rituals of
evocation. In addition, all the great annual ceremonies of the monastic
cult are evocations; for example, the afternoon prayer to the
Four-handed Lord is an offering, but his annual ritual is an evocation;
and every ritual for the high patron deity Cakrasamvara,
whether performed daily, monthly, or annually, is an evocation.
There are other important and occasional rituals of offering: the
offering to the gurus on death anniversaries, the offerings to the
sixteen Worthy Ones on the morning of New Years' Day, and
the death ritual of the "great liberation."
These two approaches to the deity often symbolize a difference in
the practitioner's psychological distance from the deity's power.
The rituals of evocation are more clearly soteriological or manipulatory
in intent: the practitioner is the deity, and gains thereby
godlike magical attainments to understand and control reality. The
rituals of offering are performed, for the most part, to thank the
deity (as a power beyond the practitioner) for favors received, or to
pray for future kindness. The distance is most clear in the often
quite blatant bribery and coercion of the lower oath-bound protectors;
in the case of Tara, one informant preferred the simile of a
mother granting favors to a son who had pleased her.
THE CONTEMPLATIVE PROCESS
In both ritual approaches the divine power must be given form
from the womb of Emptiness and directed to a specific locus; the